


Less Than Seven Leagues

by deskclutter



Category: Stardust (2007)
Genre: Community: 31_days, Happy Ending, heart's desire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dunstan and Una are reintroduced to one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Less Than Seven Leagues

Title: Less Than Seven Leagues  
**Day/Theme:** December 19th / Separation anxiety  
**Series:** Stardust (movie-verse)  
**Character/Pairing:** Tristran, Yvaine, Dunstan/Una  
**Rating:** PG

  
There once lived a boy who sought his Heart's Desire. He faced a trial by night and a trial of cunning (in which he was aided by a fairy princess), but the last trial he must pass to see his way free was a trial of time, and Father Time neither waits nor quickens for any man, as schoolboys who have had to sit through History will tell you with great alacrity.

There was once a man who sought the heart of his True Love, which can be a very different thing from a man's, or even a boy's, Heart's Desire. Fortunately for the man, they were one and the same, and he won it, though not without hardship. He found, on his way, certain other things: an important sort of stone, sixteen bolts of grade-A lightning, a serviceable sword and the skill to wield it, fair winds, good friends, and his mother whom he had lost before he had been a year old.

One might suppose that finding one's True Love and one's long-lost mother might be enough to satisfy any man, but that was not the young man's case, as said mother and true love had cause to discover for the second time they stayed at The Slaughtered Prince.

"One of these days that son of mine will learn that it is, as a general rule, a great deal more sensical to inform others of his comings and goings in a proper manner," said the Lady Una of Stormhold severely.

"He did at least leave us a note," Yvaine pointed out.

Una only patted Yvaine's hand in sympathy.

There was once a wall, from which a village gained its name. It runs along the border of our world and the edge of the land of Stormhold, a land of magic and mystery, very like our own, save when it isn't. The length between Stormhold and Wall are but a hop, skip and jump away, but a hop, skip and jump can span oceans, if a man owns a Babylon candle or pair of seven-league boots.  
__

_Dear Yvaine and Mother,_

wrote the young man.  
__

_I have found some pressing matters that must be attended to before we head for the Keep, so I must beg your forgiveness at my hasty departure. I will be back some time before dinner, provided I am not unexpectedly detained by the world.  
_

_ P.S. Yvaine, I promise I have not run back to Victoria. _

There once was a house that sat along the inside of the village of Wall, and within it lived a farmer, who was neither rich nor poor. Because he lived in Wall and not in Stormhold, he owned no magics, nor did he own a soothsayer's runes, or even a pair of seven-league boots.

(He had once owned a glass snowdrop that had chimed gently when shaken but possessed no other special qualities, for this was one of the ways where the land of Stormhold was nothing at all like the land that had nursed the village of Wall.)

He did, however, own a son.

(But as commonplace and sons might seem, _his_ son might have been the child of a princess, which is a magic that spans stories, for stories are a convention of all worlds and so a magic of their own making.)

At precisely one o'clock, directly before Una and Yvaine sat down to dinner, the door to The Slaughtered Prince banged open. "Are my companions about?" asked the young man of the innkeeper, who replied that they were, whereupon the Lady Una entered the room. "Mother!" cried the young man. "Mother, this is my father, Dunstan Thorne, and Father, this is my mother, Una."

"We've met," said Dunstan faintly, looking quite as startled as Una.

"Then I shall leave you to be reacquainted with one another," said the young man cheerfully, pointedly pulling the inquisitive innkeeper with him on his way out.

Once upon a time, there lived a man and there lived a woman. But for a heaping of luck, bravado and the convention of a story, they might have passed their entire lives within a hop, skip and jump's distance between each other and never come face to face once. Of course, by the law of fairytales, they would most likely have never seen the other again after the once, but the son of a princess is a powerful magic, and so it was that they were seen together years later at a young king's coronation. He was clasping her hand close to his heart, as though she were his True Love, or his Heart's Desire.

Perhaps she was both.


End file.
